Latest Giant Gecko Brings New Levels of Performance to the Low-Power MCU Market

We’re expanding our EFM32 Gecko product line with the latest Giant Gecko MCU, building on its reputation as a high-performance, energy efficient MCU. The new family of EFM32GG11 Giant Geckos bring the most advanced features available in low-power MCUs, making it ideally suited for industrial and building automation, asset tracking, and metering applications. New features include CAN, SDIO, and QSPI, as well as bringing all the functionality of the original Giant Gecko including Segment LCD, backup mode, USB, and TFT controller.

Shrinking power budgets for IoT applications and a rising demand for more are driving the need for MCUs that can do as much as possible while in sleep mode. With devices that can sleep more, and be more energy efficient, smaller batteries are required to meet the required battery lifetimes in applications like metering, wearables, and even personal medical devices, enabling lower cost and better form factors. These are both key to driving the adoption of IoT devices.

Giant Gecko provides best-in-class cryptography, for applications that need to safeguard user information and keep communication confidential. Energy-efficient security accelerators for AES, ECC and SHA allow these algorithms to be run much faster and more efficiently than conventional software methods. The device also includes a security management unit (SMU) supporting fine-grained security for peripheral access, and a NIST-certified true random number generator (TRNG) for higher security randomization.

Giant Gecko MCUs come in a range of QFN, QFP and BGA package options with up to 192 pins, including many that are footprint-compatible with existing EFM32 MCUs. And Simplicity Studio development tools support the Gecko MCUs, offering one-click access to everything needed to complete projects in a unified Eclipse-based environment.